Government unblocks 32 websites after they promise to cooperate

New Delhi, Jan 11: The government has ordered unblocking of all the 32 websites that were being used by terrorists after these sites promised to cooperate with the authorities and removed "jihadist" content.

"Order was issued on Thursday to unblock all 32 websites that were blocked following complaint of Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad that ISIS is disseminating content through them. All websites has responded that they will work with government and removed jihadist content," a source told reporters.

Indian Computer Emergency Response Team director general Gulshan Rai confirmed the development.

The websites were blocked in November following an order from a Mumbai court, which was approached by Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad (ATS) with a plea to block some websites carrying anti-India content.

During its probe into certain terror cases, the ATS had received information that some websites were carrying anti- national content, said an official.

The websites included dailymotion.com, weebly.com, github.com, pastebin.com, archive.org, heypasteit.com, ipaste.eu, thesnippetapp.com, vimeo.com among others.

They purportedly containing material about Areeb Majid, an alleged ISIS member who was arrested by NIA, and three others hailing from north Karnataka's Bhatkal area.

Sources said some of the websites were being used to induce Indian youth to join ISIS and for spreading news about purported death of certain persons while fighting Allied Forces in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ban was lifted on some of the websites in December and rest of have been ordered to be unblock now, the source said.

PTI